British Cancel '90 Wightman Cup

Tournament's Future In Doubt

The Wightman Cup, a women's professional tennis challenge between the United States and Great Britain that was played in Williamsburg four times during the 1980s, has been canceled for 1990.

The Lawn Tennis Association of Great Britain announced its decision Tuesday not to hold this year's tournament at London's Royal Albert Hall and gave no word whether the event would be resumed in 1991, the next year it would have been scheduled for William and Mary Hall.

Representatives of both countries will meet in April to discuss the Cup's future, which probably will include a change in format from the current seven-match series.

In the last decade of an event that began in 1923, American victories have been a foregone conclusion. The U.S. has won the last 11 series, including 7-0 match sweeps in four of the last five years, and holds a 51-10 all-time advantage.

Millie West, the associate athletic director at William and Mary who has served as tournament chairperson in 1983, 1985, 1987 and 1989, said she was confident the pros would return to Williamsburg in 1991.

"I think they would give us the first option," West said. "I don't think it will return in the same format, but if it returns, I think it will be a very viable competition."

The LTA "had some plans that were pretty good, but once they realized the difficulty, they wanted to buy some more time," West said.

"The disparity between the players in recent years has not been competitive," LTA President Ron Presley said. "We are very sorry it has become necessary to suspend the Wightman Cup."

"The Wightman Cup has always been a wonderful event and we look forward to finding a solution," USTA President David Markin said.

West said she will attend a USTA meeting from April 7-14 in Naples, Fla., where officials from both sides will discuss alternative formats for the Cup.

"The final decision, I think, will come in late spring," West said.

The crux of the format change is to strengthen a British team whose No. 1 player, Jo Durie, entered the 1989 Cup ranked 102nd on the Women's International Tennis Association computer and nursing a shoulder injury.

By comparison, the U.S. squad included then-13th-ranked Mary Joe Fernandez, 25th-ranked Lori McNeil and teen-age sensation Jennifer Capriati, who won her only match 6-0, 6-0.

In the current listings, Californian-born Monique Javer is the highest-ranked British player at 99, while the Americans have 30 in the top 100.

"Just by giving British players a Union Jack isn't going to bridge that gap," said Ann Jones, who won 16 of the 32 Wightman Cup matches she played between 1957 and 1975 and was non-playing captain of the British team for the last two years.

Jones said she was in favor of a European-style format even if it meant no British players could qualify for the squad.

"You would have to talk with the players to see if they'd want to play," Jones said. "But you have to move with the times. The Ryder Cup was not an instant success, but look at it now.

"If you could build the Wightman Cup up into Europe against the United States, it would be a viable match for the future. It would be far more worthwhile than struggling along as we are at the moment."

To equalize the competition, West said the U.S. could play a Commonwealth Countries squad that would include players from Australia and Canada as well as Great Britain, or the Americans could battle a team of European players.

In one such event, the Euro-Americas Cup last February at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Mich., top-ranked Steffi Graf of West Germany spearheaded an easy European victory against a team of North and South American players, including veteran Pam Shriver of Maryland.

"The times I've played I've enjoyed playing the team format, but with what's happened to Great Britain in tennis, you can't have these one-sided matches year in, year out," Pam Shriver said. "It's a lot of fun, but it's kind of hard to promote when all the matches are 6-0 or 6-1.

"Maybe if England, Australia, New Zealand and Canada represented the Commonwealth, it would work or could be something that could be sold."

Officials of the New Jersey-based BASF Corporation, the title sponsor of last year's event, were not available for comment on the matter. Bob Taylor, the director of public affairs of BASF's Fibers Division in Williamsburg, said the officials were overseas.